Walking the long way to the station
The direct route to my station takes eleven minutes and runs along a road with four lanes of traffic and one bakery. There is another route that takes twenty-five minutes. It goes behind the allotments, along a canal with a towpath that floods in March, and past a row of small houses where someone keeps an impressive number of cats.
For a long time I only took the long way on weekends. In April I started taking it on weekday mornings too, leaving fifteen minutes earlier, and it has quietly become the best part of most days.
Some things I have noticed, in no particular order.
The same heron stands on the same stone almost every morning. It does not care about me at all.
The allotments change every week. In April it was all bare soil and string lines. Now there are broad beans taller than the fences, and an old man in a flat cap who waves with a trowel.
Fifteen minutes of walking with no headphones is enough to sort out whatever I was worried about when I left the house. Not solve it, just put it in order. I arrive at the station knowing which thing to deal with first.
Rain is less of a problem than I expected. A good jacket and the knowledge that you will be warm in twenty minutes makes most weather fine. The exception is wind along the canal, which comes straight at you with nothing to stop it.
I am not going to pretend this is some deep practice. It is just a walk. But the eleven-minute route was the kind of time that disappears without leaving anything behind, and the long way is the opposite. I remember these mornings.